According to a Financial Times report, Meta is planning another round of layoffs. Two people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that there were ambiguities over the company’s future budgets and workforce. The job cuts are expected to take place in March, but it’s unclear how people might be affected.
The lack of clarity led employees to realize that little work was being done because managers were unable to plan ahead, the report said. Some budgets that would normally be finalized by the end of the year are still in the works, and decisions that would normally take days to approve are now taking a month in some cases. Meta did not immediately respond.
The report comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts earlier this month that the company plans to continue containing costs. He promised a “Year of Efficiency” and said Meta would be more proactive when it comes to weeding out low-priority, low-performing roles. Zuckerberg noted that Meta would flatten out its organizational structure and “remove some levels of middle management to allow for faster decision-making.”
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In November, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, about 13% of its global workforce. The cuts were the largest in Meta’s history and impacted multiple departments across the business, with recruiting and sales teams being the hardest hit. At the time, the company said the hiring freeze would last until early 2023, with only “a few exceptions”.
While Meta is clearly not the only company to announce layoffs in the past year, it is one of the few to extend its previous layoffs. For example, Amazon initially announced that it would be laying off 10,000 employees, but later increased that number to 18,000. Additionally, Coinbase recently laid off 950 employees after laying off 1,100 employees last June.
The news comes as Meta today announced that its chief commercial officer, Marne Levine, is stepping down after 13 years with the company. While at Meta, Levine served as Instagram’s first COO and also served as Facebook’s vice president of global public policy. Meta said that going forward, Nicola Mendelsohn and Justin Osofsky will take on expanded roles as heads of sales and partnerships, reporting to COO Javier Olivan.
